1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a parallelogram counter, and more particularly, to a parallelogram counter for counting small components such as tablet type pills,bolus, and coins, quickly, conveniently, and sanitarily.
2. Description of the Related Art
Since the adult's chronic disease in a circulatory system or an endocrine system increases including the hypertension, the diabetes, and the arteriosclerosis, the hyperlipidemia, etc., a large number of pills should be counted to prescribe medicines to a patient.
Therefore, a pharmacist should count and classify pills one by one to meet the whole dosage for individual medicines needed according to a doctor's prescription, in a pharmacy. The counted and classified pills are re-classified again into unit doses to prescribe medicine to a patient for numerous. The pharmacist may take or feel with pains. Particularly, the pharmacist may feel the mental oppressive sensation that he or she should count pills or capsules quickly and exactly at a state where patients await. Further, when the pharmacist dispenses medicines as described above, a hygienic problem such as contagion due to the bacteria or virus may occur.
In the meantime, as the conventional art, a device such as a triangular counter, a groove type counter, or an automatic counter has been being used in order to count pills in a pharmacy.
The triangular counter is configured so that an angle between two flanges becomes 60 degrees. Accordingly, when pills are contained in the triangular counter and then shaken to the right and left, a hexagonal arrangement is achieved so that the pills occupy the minimum area at the least. As can be seen from the following Table 1, the pills form an arrangement that the number of pills increase by one everytime when the number of lines increases by one. In this case, the arrangement follows a certain rule. People may think that it is easy to count pills due to the above-described features of the triangular counter. However, it is not so easy to count the pills, or the number of lines of pills with the eyes due to repetition of identical shapes. Further, as the number of lines increases, the number of pills per line increases, to thereby demand a high-degree concentration in order to determine the total number of the pills.
TABLE 1Arrangement of The number of Pills in Triangular Counter.The number of Lines1234. . .8910The number of pills1234. . .8910per lineThe total number of pills13610. . .364555
In the meantime, a groove type counter is disclosed in a Korean Utility Model Registration No. 20-0232780. Here, a number of circular grooves having a certain shape or size are formed in the groove type counter according to size of pills.
Accordingly, only pills can be filled in the circular grooves. As a result, the number of pills can be calculated according to the number of the circular grooves. However, the conventional groove type counter should be changed according to the size of pills. Also, pills should be filled in the grooves. In the case that pills are counted more than the number of grooves, a counting work should be repeated. That is, inconveniences of the counting work are not completely solved.
In order to solve the above-described defects, an automatic counter has been developed so that the number of pills can be calculated regardless of the sizes and shapes of pills at fast speeds. However, since such an automatic counter is very expensive, it is not substantially widely provided to even a small scale pharmacy.
Besides, various types of tablet counting devices are known. For example, the following U.S. patents describe various types of tablet counting devices.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,530,009 to M. R. Fields on Nov. 14, 1950 entitled “Tablet counting device”
U.S. Pat. No. 2,952,369 to R. S. Rew on Sep. 13, 1960 entitled “Pill counter”
U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,620 to W. L. Deininger on Sep. 13, 1977 entitled “Pill and capsule counter”
U.S. Pat. No. 4,121,722 to Sussman et al. on Oct. 24, 1978 entitled “Unit counter for pills, tablets, spheres, coins and the like”
U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,091 to David J. Blake on Jun. 24, 1986 entitled “Pill counter”
U.S. Pat. No. 6,821,079 to Robert N. Probe et al. on Nov. 23, 2004 entitled “Pill and capsule counter”
While some of the objects and the structural arrangements of the above described devices, at first appearance, have similarities with the present invention, they differ in shape and function respects. These differences, which will be described in more detail hereinafter, are essential for the effective use of the invention and which admit of the advantages that are not available with the prior devices.
Therefore, to solve the above-described problems, a counting device which can count pills quickly and conveniently regardless of the size of the pills need to be developed.